Project Orange Krate Interior - Setting Up The Office

When setting up the interior of your Camaro, there’s nothing more important than customizing your business office with the right components to make your driving experience the best it can be. No, we’re not talking about beanbag chairs and lava lamps; although that might be cool for a different time and place. Seeing that we are starting from scratch, ergonomics play a big role in selecting and setting up your controls, information management, and seating. Someone building a weekend cruiser would have a different approach to an interior than someone wanting to compete in the show arena or hitting various types of racetracks. For our purposes, Orange Krate is being built to offer plenty of cutting-edge performance on the street while also being able to execute plenty of precision driving at the racetrack, plus have looks that kill on the show field. So in essence, its interior will need to be fully multi-purposed.

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Wanting to give the dash a bit of a facelift from the often-seen factory version, we contacted the Greening Auto Company for one of their innovative fiberglass units. With its slick and racy appearance, it would give the interior a fresh new look. One of the neat aspects of the dash is that it was designed to incorporate the factory lower dash, which houses a number of components including ventilation controls, ashtray, radio, air vents, and glovebox. The dash itself offers a car builder the freedom of gauge placement and selection as well as ventilation outlets and utilizes all behind-the-dash factory-steel bracing as well as mounting hardware. As with any custom application such as this, there was a bit of trimming and finessing to meld the upper and lower units together. The completed installation looked just plain bitchin’ when laid in place.

Being that Orange Krate will see more than its share of time at the dragstrip, autocross, and road course, it was obvious that monitoring the car’s vital statistics as well as performance would be of great importance. A call was placed to Racepak/CSI Data Systems for one of their industry leading IQ3 Logger Dash systems. The compact and fully programmable IQ3 LCD dash merges Racepak’s V-Net single cable sensor technology and GPS-based data logging with a fully programmable display. The dash features an internal 32-channel data logger with track mapping and speed obtained through an internal GPS board and three-axis G-meter. In addition to monitoring all engine vitals, the dash allows for 28 programmable inputs across four data pages while also capturing information including GPS speeds, lap and segment times, acceleration, lateral and vertical g’s, and a multitude of other pertinent information. Add in progressive shift lights, warning lights, and easy programming through their DataLink II software and you have a winning combination in a compact package to keep you in tune with everything you need to know. Basic installation in locating the unit was a snap with the provided template to map out the fitment of the IQ3 to the new dash.

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Another key component in setting up your operational controls is having just the right steering column to take on your specific needs. Flaming River specializes in steering components and offers a multitude of options to fit your requirements. For our application, we chose their 33-inch keyed tilt column powdercoated in black with everything to complete the installation including their tapered forged aluminum steering wheel adapter, stramp clamp, column dress-up kit, and ultra-cool leather wrapped D-Wheel. With the steering completed, there’s nothing better than a rock-solid shifter arm and knob from Hurst Shifters to dial in the gear changes while settling into some ultra-supportive bucket seats. Procar by Scat supplied a pair of their new Evolution Series Model 1616 seats, which are designed to deliver plenty of comfort and support on both the street and the racetrack. Initially designed for late-model Corvettes, they look right at home in just about any muscle car, offering a number of color combinations as well as accommodations for five-point safety harnesses.

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It’s easy to see that the combination of components selected for Orange Krate will give plenty of comfort and performance regardless where the asphalt is it’s tearing up.

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